Flight of the Earls (1607): Ulster's Gaelic Lords Leave Ireland

The Flight of the Earls was the departure from Ireland, on 14 September 1607, of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, with about ninety-nine followers. They sailed from Rathmullan on Lough Swilly in County Donegal and never came back. Their exile marked the end of the old Gaelic lordships of Ulster and gave the English crown the opportunity to confiscate their lands and begin the Plantation of Ulster.

Background: the Nine Years’ War

In the late sixteenth century Ulster was the most Gaelic and least governed part of Ireland. Hugh O’Neill, who had been raised partly in English circles and was recognised by Elizabeth I as Earl of Tyrone, became the most powerful lord in the province. In the 1590s he joined Red Hugh O’Donnell of Tyrconnell in a long rebellion against English expansion, known as the Nine Years’ War (1593–1603).

The Irish won notable victories, such as the Yellow Ford in 1598, but the arrival of a Spanish force at Kinsale led to a decisive English victory there in late December 1601. Red Hugh O’Donnell went to Spain to seek further help and died there in 1602. O’Neill surrendered to Lord Deputy Mountjoy at Mellifont on 30 March 1603, unaware that Elizabeth had died six days earlier.

Why the earls left

The Treaty of Mellifont was generous: O’Neill kept his title and most of his lands, and Rory O’Donnell, Red Hugh’s brother, was created Earl of Tyrconnell. Under James I, however, after the Union of the Crowns, the earls found their position eroding.

The new Lord Deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney-General, Sir John Davies, worked to extend English law and government into Ulster. Sheriffs, judges and Protestant bishops arrived, and the earls’ authority over sub-lords was challenged. O’Neill faced a damaging legal dispute with Donal O’Cahan over lands in what became County Londonderry, and both earls were deep in debt.

By 1607 they also had reason to fear arrest. O’Donnell and Cúchonnacht Maguire, lord of Fermanagh, had been in contact with Spain, and rumours of a conspiracy were circulating in Dublin. Historians still debate whether the earls fled because a plot was about to be exposed or because they hoped to return with Spanish troops. Either way, leaving was a gamble.

The departure

Maguire went to the continent and arranged for a French ship to sail to Lough Swilly. When it arrived in September 1607, O’Neill hurried north from a meeting with Chichester and joined O’Donnell at Rathmullan. On 14 September the ship sailed with the two earls, their families and retainers. O’Neill’s wife, Catherine Magennis, was with them, but some family members, including one of O’Neill’s young sons, were left behind.

The voyage was rough. The party wanted to reach Spain, but storms pushed them east, and they landed at Quillebeuf at the mouth of the Seine in Normandy in early October. Tadhg Ó Cianáin, a member of the group, kept an Irish-language account of the journey that is the main source for the voyage and its aftermath.

Exile

The French court allowed the exiles to pass through but would not keep them. They moved into the Spanish Netherlands, where the authorities in Brussels received them cautiously. Philip III of Spain, now at peace with England and soon to agree a truce with the Dutch, did not want them in Spain or to risk a new war. The earls were directed to Rome instead, arriving in the spring of 1608 to live on papal and Spanish pensions.

Exile soon proved deadly. Rory O’Donnell died of fever in Rome in July 1608, and Maguire died in Genoa the following month. Hugh O’Neill lived on for years, still hoping for Spanish support for a return. He died in Rome on 20 July 1616 and was buried in San Pietro in Montorio.

Consequences

In London and Dublin the flight was treated as an admission of treason. The earls were proclaimed traitors, and their lands, together with those of other Ulster lords, were declared forfeit to the crown. In 1608 Sir Cahir O’Doherty, lord of Inishowen, rose in revolt and burned the new town of Derry; his death in battle that July removed another Gaelic leader.

These events gave the government an unprecedented opportunity. Six counties of Ulster were surveyed, and from 1609 most of the land was granted to English and Scottish Protestant settlers in the Plantation of Ulster, transforming the province.

Legacy

In Irish memory the Flight of the Earls became a symbol of the end of the Gaelic order and of exile. Irish poets lamented the loss of their patrons, and the name itself is a later description. The 400th anniversary in 2007 was marked by commemorations in Rathmullan, where a sculpture now stands on the shore, and in Rome.

Timeline

• 1593–1603: Nine Years’ War between the Gaelic lords of Ulster and the English crown.
• 1601, late December: English victory at the Battle of Kinsale.
• 1603, 30 March: Hugh O’Neill submits at Mellifont.
• 1607, 14 September: The earls sail from Rathmullan on Lough Swilly.
• 1607, early October: The ship lands at Quillebeuf in Normandy.
• 1608, spring: The exiles reach Rome.
• 1608, July: Rory O’Donnell dies in Rome; O’Doherty’s revolt ends.
• 1616, 20 July: Hugh O’Neill dies in Rome.

Why it matters

The Flight of the Earls removed the last great Gaelic leaders of Ulster and left their lands open to confiscation. It was the turning point that led to the Plantation of Ulster, whose effects on the population, religion and politics of the north of Ireland are still felt today.